


I'm Sorry

by Bored_trash



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Depression, Homophobia, I'm Sorry, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love, suicide note, this is really depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:45:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bored_trash/pseuds/Bored_trash
Summary: "I was happy once.""What happened?""I grew up." Yamaguchi says, a tear sliding down his face.





	I'm Sorry

**Author's Note:**

> TW: suicide, self-harm, homophobia. DO NOT READ if you're likely to be triggered by this!!
> 
> If you feel like you might harm yourself, contact the Samaritans at 116 123 (UK)
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Haikyuu!!

It's funny, how little it takes to push somebody over the edge.

*

"I was happy, once." Yamaguchi said, face frozen, eyes staring blankly at nothing. It was early morning, around 6am, and he was sat in the school counsellor's office.

The sun shone through the blinds, lazily covering the large bookshelf and his chair in yellow light, with the viscosity of egg yolks - it seemed as if it could dissipate and blend into a different colour; too easily corrupted and coerced.

He turned his head away from the window and looked at the counsellor, meeting her eyes for a second before looking back down again and studying the grey carpet, embarrassed.

"What happened?" She asks, grey hair falling into her face gently as she leans forward to write in a notebook, pencil scratching lightly on paper, forming shorthand symbols that he had tried to interpret but, so far, had been unable to.

"I grew up."

*

He would give anything to go back in time, to when he was four or so years old. Before he sabotaged everything for himself and destroyed his own contentment.

The first four years of a life, generally, are the happiest, in his opinion. They're the years in which nothing is expected of you, and you expect nothing in return. Years in which wonder and curiosity are infinite, where nobody is unkind. The idea of terrible things, like murder, or hatred, or war, don't exist in the bubble formed around an infant. The worst thing that can happen to them (they imagine) is tripping over while playing.

Yamaguchi has only a few memories of his first few years, but they're all happy ones. The world seems muffled, scaled down in them, as he didn't fully understand it, so wasn't able to be scared or stressed by it. He had been covered, as most children are, in a safety blanket for those years, and simply lived his life happily - playing, laughing, talking and befriending other children his age.

When he first went to school, he loved it. He was able to talk to other children as much as he pleased, and made many friends. They spent their days building sandcastles, playing hopscotch and building towers out of blocks. These memories are tinged in blue and yellow, as the sky was always a bright, clear, turquoise, and the sun a smudge of yellow in the heavens, which seemed to never be covered.

*

"Why did growing up make you unhappy?"

He pauses for a second, deliberating and collecting his thoughts together.

"Because you lose the protective blanket that muffles all the bad things. You encounter more people, who begin to expect more of you. And if you don't meet those expectations, they become unkind. And it seems the older you become, the more unkind people are."

*

He was five when the sadness began. Cracks emerged in his once-perfect life, and the darkness seeped in through them. Initially, he tried to cover them - with tape, paper, his hands. When he realised that wouldn't work, he simply closed his eyes and tried to ignore them. But eventually that too stopped working, and he sighed, and sat back, resigning himself to the growing sense of despair building I'm him.

One day he had walked into his classroom and discovered that a new student had joined his class. Eito. Over the years, Yamaguchi has demonised his face, subconsciously twisting and turning it around in his mind until it became something gnarled and evil. His mind conjures up the image of a child with a sharp, mocking grin; cold, mocking eyes; calloused hands that were always bunched in fists.

For whatever reason, Eito had taken an instant dislike to Yamaguchi. On his first day, he had approached him in the playground and pushed him to the ground, laughing.

A crowd gathered around him and Eito. Yamaguchi, overwhelmed, began to wail. This was his first direct exposure to unkindness, and he instantly hated it and felt a sadness so heavy it was near-impossible to breathe, he was so crushed by its weight.

His cries reverberated around the playground, and he looked to the sky, half-expecting an angelic figure to float down from the heavens and rescue him. But the only thing he was met with was a smattering of raindrops hitting his sensitive skin and making him shiver.

Eito had laughed, and said one word. "Crybaby." One other child repeated it, then another, and another, and another, until it became a merciless chant. Yamaguchi simply sat on the floor and cried, covering his ears to protect himself from the insult.

When he got home from school, Yamaguchi had told his parents about the incident, distraught. They had been unsympathetic. "Just don't cry next time. You're making yourself a target."

The next time it had happened, he tries not to cry, but found he was unable to. Now it was worse. He was imagining how disappointed his parents were in him, and this only made him cry harder and harder, not stopping even when a teacher had shoved through the crowd and picked him up, hurrying him away from the pint-sized aggressors who seemed like giants.

All through elementary school, he had been bullied by his classmates. That is, until Tsukishima joined his class.

*

"Surely you ran into kind people as well?"

"I did. One person in particular was very kind to me." Yamaguchi smiled for a second, but then remembered that this person had hurt him in a way so heartbreaking, the crack it made in his life was irreparable. His eyes shone with tears, and he didn't hold them back. One escaped and slid down his cheek slowly, light glinting off it from the waning sunlight.

*

Tsukishima's first time talking to him had been when he had rescued him from a few of his bullies, that penultimate day after school in the park.

That very moment was the moment Yamaguchi fell in love slightly with Tsukishima. He didn't realise this until he was 14, and by that time he had fallen so deeply that he was unable to stop his emotions.

From that day onwards, he had followed Tsukishima incessantly, and eventually became his best friend. Tsukki never expressed appreciation outwardly to Yamaguchi, and at best appeared to tolerate him, at worst seemed to be irritated by him.

But he had kept on following Tsukki because he was never cruel like the other children, and that was good enough for him.

They went through middle school together, and began a routine. They would walk to school with each other every day, Tsukishima knocking on his door every day at 7:10. They would rarely talk on the way there, as his friend wasn't a morning person, but Yamaguchi always enjoyed the quiet companionship.

On the walk back from school, they would talk about meaningless things - teachers they liked or hated, upcoming tests, what they were having for dinner. Eventually they started hanging out after school frequently too, and at some point Yamaguchi realised that Tsukishima actually liked him. This realisation stunned him and made him indescribably happy.

As they entered their third year of Middle school, Yamaguchi realised his feelings for his best friend weren't just platonic. The realisation sat on him like a weight all through the year, and by the time they moved to Karasuno High School, he decided that he would confess to his friend, consequences be damned.

This turned out to be a decision he would come to regret, and would end up being the turning point of his life - plunging it into pitch black.

*

"Are you okay?" The therapist asks, handing Yamaguchi a box of tissues.

He pushes them away. "I'm fine."

"What happened with the person who was kindest to you?"

*

It was just after they had lost against Oikawa's team that Yamaguchi had confessed. They were walking home from the tournament, Yamaguchi sniffling from the loss, Tsukishima more distant than usual. His way of expressing sadness.

In hindsight, it was probably the worst way to confess to somebody.

It was unexpected. He felt raw with emotion, and wanted to find some way to release it, so he had opened his mouth and let the words tumble out.

"I think I'm in love with you."

Tsukishima stopped, and faced him. "What?" He asked, his face cold, mouth twisted in a sneer of disgust.

"I said, I think I'm in love with you" Yamaguchi said again, hands trembling. He was beginning to realise how colossal mistake he'd made was.

"Well, obviously I can't return your feelings. I'm normal. I like girls. Honestly, I find the idea of two men being together pretty disgusting. Goodbye, Yamaguchi. Don't follow me." Tsukishima turned and stalked off, disappearing into the night.

Yamaguchi was shell-shocked. He hadn't expected his friend to return his feelings, but he didn't expect to be called disgusting either. And in such a casual tone.

The cracks in his life collapsed then, and the sadness fell onto him and he could feel himself drowning in it, unable to swim to the surface. It was thick like tar.

"Tsukki, wait! I'm sorry!" Yamaguchi cried, but the boy was either too far away, or didn't care enough to come back. He was forced to make his way back home alone, jumping at every shadow. Once he got home, he instantly went to bed, but didn't sleep a wink.

He spent that night praying to a god he didn't believe in, begging some unknown deity for his confession to be erased from his best friend's memory.

 _'You're a disgusting pervert. Even Tsukki thinks so.'_ He thought to himself, as tears slid down his face and dropped onto his cold pillow.

*

"I loved him. I confessed. He called me disgusting."

"Did you reconcile with him?"

"No."

*

The next day at school, Tsukishima ignored him. He didn't walk to school with him, disappeared at lunchtime, and didn't show up to practice. At one point, Yamaguchi got so desperate that, after seeing Tsukki in the corridor, he yelled after him, ignoring all of the curious stares that came from his classmates.

"Tsukki! Can I talk to you for just a second? Please!"

Tsukishima didn't even turn around, but responded in a mechanic voice. "Don't call me that. It's annoying, and I don't even know you."

The weeks passed, with Tsukishima still ignoring him. The volleyball team tried to cheer him up, but the sadness was becoming so overwhelming and was such a huge presence that Yamaguchi could no longer see the surface as he tried to swim up through the tar.

*

"Do you think that directly brought on your attempt?"

"My attempt at what?" Yamaguchi smiled, a cruel grin.

"You know what I mean."

"I don't."

"Your attempted suicide, Yamaguchi."

"Oh, that. You should've made it clearer." He sneered, becoming defensive and mean as memories he didn't want to arise fell into his mind, suffocating him.

*

One day, he just couldn't stand it anymore. Tsukishima had been the best thing in his life, and he had ruined it. He was disgusting, a friendless loser, and he decided it would be best to simply stop existing.

His parents were at work, so it was easy. He took a razor from the bathroom, and plunged it into the skin of his wrists, dragging it vertically. Instantly blood sprung from the wound, and Yamaguchi groaned in pain, an animalistic noise. Hands shaking now, he moved onto the next wrist and did the same, but the cut was slightly shallower.

It turned out that this would save his life.

His parents came home and found him unconscious on the floor, bleeding out. They had called an ambulance and he was quickly transported to the hospital and given a blood transfusion. He was forced to stay there for a few days, but managed to convince his parents not to sign him into the inpatient psych ward, on the condition that he would see the school counsellor.

His only regret, while in the hospital, was that he had failed at suicide, and was still alive.

*

"So, did it bring on your attempt?"

"Yes."

"And do you still feel actively suicidal?"

"Of course not." Yamaguchi lied.

*

He had left school early, feigning sickness after his appointment with the counsellor.

He walked home alone, and when he got through the door, he checked the time. It was 10 in the morning - his parents weren't due back for another seven hours at least.

He walked into the bathroom, and this time emptied out two whole packets of paracetamol. He wasn't going to risk anything his time. One by one, he swallowed the bitter pills until he was no longer able to.

He fell to the floor, completely still, and stopped breathing.

*

His parents discovered him a few hours later, but their son was already long gone. Crying, they called for the body to be taken away, and sobbed together, desperately cobbling together theories as to why their son would end his own life.

The funeral was a small affair, and consisted only of close family. The years passed, and eventually his parents decided it would be best to try to forget. They adopted a new child, a five year old, and focussed on raising her to the best of their abilities.

The last communication Yamaguchi had with the world was his suicide note, addressed to Tsukishima. His parents hadn't been able to read it, feeling that they would be betraying their son if they read something clearly not meant for them, and instead gave it to their son's former best friend, who took it and read it, pale faced and disbelieving.

_'Dear Tsukishima,_

_First of all, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I disgusted you so much, I'm sorry that I burdened you with my friendship, and I'm sorry that I tried to turn it into something more._

_I'm especially sorry that it had to end this way._

_I hope that, in the unlikely event you are saddened by my passing, you can be comforted by the fact that, for the most part, you were the best thing in my life. My happiest memories are with you._

_Unfortunately, my saddest memories are also of you. But of course, your reaction to my confession is nobody's fault but my own._

_I only hope, that in time, you can find it in your heart to forgive me._

_Love,_

_Yamaguchi.'_

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry


End file.
